MySpaceTV to stream ‘Sorority’

Website gets jump on WB.com show

MySpaceTV has landed a one-day jump over its broadband rivals to stream webisodes of “Sorority Forever,” TheWB.com’s first major Web original skein, beginning today.

New webisodes of the sudsy mystery will bow weekday mornings at both MySpaceTV and TheWB.com, where they will appear exclusively for a 24-hour window before TheWB.com distributes them to other broadband partners. MySpaceTV is creating branded channels for additional Warner Bros. Television Group skeins under the revenue-sharing agreement.

Warner’s new site began streaming old episodes of WB skeins such as “Gilmore Girls” late last month and has started to roll out Web skeins, but “Sorority Forever” is its highest-profile original offering thus far. Created by McG’s Wonderland Sound and Vision banner and Big Fantastic, producers of “Prom Queen,” the skein stars Jessica Rose of “lonelygirl15″ fame. Preview webisodes are a couple minutes long and packed with ingredients familiar to viewers of “The OC,” a skein Wonderland produced for Fox.

“We had been tracking the project for some time before Warner Bros. got involved,” said Jason Kirk, VP of MySpaceTV, who lauded the high production values of the skein and proven track record of the creatives involved.

Brent Poer, general manager of TheWB.com, said the company decided to partner up with MySpace to better ensure that auds discover the skein.

“We’re not so arrogant that we believe people are going to every day type in ‘TheWB.com,’ ” he said. “This audience is all over the Web all during the day, and we can’t expect them to come to us in one place.”

Poer said the site “will constantly be rolling out original series” but said that there aren’t any other partnership deals in place at this time; TheWB.com plans to have a distribution network in place in mid-September.

Among the other skeins debuting later through the first quarter of next year: Josh Schwartz’s untitled music project, a look behind the scenes at a fictional Hollywood rock club; and “Rich Girl, Poor Girl,” a reality skein from “Laguna Beach” creator Gary Auerbach.

“Sorority Fever” is “one of our marquee series,” he said. “It certainly gives our viewers an idea of what is going to come.

“This audience has such a short attention span, if you are not feeding the pipeline, they are not going to think of you and move on.”